Bartleby & Co.
AuthorEnrique Vila-Matas
Original titleBartleby y compañía
TranslatorJonathan Dunne
CountrySpain
LanguageSpanish
PublisherEditorial Anagrama
Publication date
1 February 2000
Published in English
2004
Pages184
ISBN978-84-339-2449-0

Bartleby & Co. (Spanish: Bartleby y compañía) is a 2000 novel by the Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas.

Plot

A Spanish office worker wants to be a writer, but struggles to follow up his obscure first book. He takes a sick leave and starts to writes footnotes to a non-existing text. He comments on writers whose careers stalled, such as Herman Melville, Robert Walser, Felipe Alfau and J. D. Salinger. He turns the improductive central characters from Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Letter from Lord Chandos" into role models. He goes through various reasons to not write.[1]

Reception

Kirkus Reviews called the book a "wry, mind-bending delight" and associated its literary mode with Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino.[1] Mark Sanderson of The Guardian called the book original and "a postmodern paradox, something out of nothing" which with its literary references will make almost anyone "feel woefully illiterate - but then that is part of the game".[2]

References

  1. 1 2 "Bartleby & Co". Kirkus Reviews. 15 October 2004. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  2. Sanderson, Mark (14 August 2004). "I'd prefer not to". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.